After receiving national recognition as a recipient for the 2019 Prime Minister’s Award for Teaching Excellence, Steven Schultz was finally celebrated at Ecole Lacombe Composite High School for his accomplishments amongst his friends, family, colleagues, students, and his home community.

“Besides getting married and seeing my kids graduate from high school and or university this ranks right at the top. I’m overwhelmed with the community that was represented here all the way back from when I began teaching to present day,” said Schultz.

A couple of notable elected officials praised Schultz including City of Lacombe Mayor Grant Creasey, Lacombe-Ponoka MLA Ron Orr, Education Minister Adriana LaGrange, Barb Calkins who spoke on behalf of Blaine Calkins, MP, and two representatives from Wolf Creek School Division Kelly Lowry, Board of Trustees, and Mark McWhinnie, Superintendent.

Schultz and some of his companions shed a tear at the mention of his accomplishments, hard work, and educational exploits and he gave thanks to the strong community that supported him.

“Collaboration with the community is such a key piece that we don’t incorporate as much as we could,” said Schultz who had all those who supported him over the years stand up to receive his thanks.

The teacher is so inspired by the model of a community that he uses a community model in the classroom to inspire his students.

“If you stand in front of your classroom, with the act that you have it all together, that you never make mistakes and that you’re the teacher and they’re the student, students will still learn but there’s not a community feel.”

His involvement in the community was the very thing that inspired the Lacombe Mayor, Grant Creasey to nominate him for the award in the first place.

“For some of the programs that he has initiated here, the City has worked closely with him in running the beekeeping program and others. He’s a pleasure to work with and hopefully, we have many more years of successful partnerships coming up,” said Creasey.

In accepting the prestigious award, Schultz invited Prime Minister, Justin Trudeau to ELCHS where he told him he would have a jar of honey waiting for him from the beekeeping program.

“I just gave him the challenge to come out to our small province and engage in our population and our youth and I hope he takes me up on that challenge.”

Now that Schultz has returned from Ottawa, he will be working on his ‘Roofs for Kids’ project in creating a goat sanctuary for students to learn about animal husbandry in real life situations.